The ceasefire in Darfur, western Sudan, is a welcome first step but requires immediate and rigorous international monitoring to avert a humanitarian disaster and continued civilian displacement, Human Rights Watch said today.
The humanitarian ceasefire is aimed at halting a 15-month conflict between the government of Sudan and two rebel groups known as the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. The 45 day, automatically renewing agreement was brokered by the Chadian government and signed in N'djamena, Chad, on April 8, 2004, under international observation. The parties also agreed to try to reach a political agreement at a later date.
"Without the international spotlight, the Sudanese government is unlikely to disarm and disband its Arab militia, re-establish security in the rural areas, or guarantee the safety of displaced persons who wish to return home for planting season-crucial benchmarks for any improvement in the situation," said Jemera Rone, Sudan researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The government will only reverse the displacement that it has caused under intense, sustained international pressure."
Human Rights Watch said Sudan's army forces and militias have burned villages and killed, raped, and abducted hundreds of civilians and forced hundreds of thousands more from their homes, a pattern of abuses amounting to crimes against humanity. Despite these widespread and systematic violations, the ceasefire agreement lacks a clear international mechanism to monitor continuing attacks on civilians and the access of agencies providing humanitarian assistance; in fact it does not mention human rights monitoring at all.
"The absence of a monitoring component is a striking defect given that the looming humanitarian crisis is the direct result of gross human rights violations committed by the government and its Arab janjaweed militias," said Rone.
Human Rights Watch said the Sudanese government's scorched earth campaign has become increasingly brutal over the past three months. Joint attacks by government forces and janjaweed militias have been well documented. Hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians from the same ethnic groups from which most members of the rebel movement are drawn-African Fur, Masaalit, and Zaghawa-have been forced from their homes to camps and settlements around the main towns of Darfur and refugee areas of eastern Chad.
Human Rights Watch research and reports from Darfur indicate that even after civilians have fled into camps and larger towns, the militias continue to prey on them. Incidents of summary executions, rape, and looting of displaced civilians have been reported from camps and settlements under militia control.
"Without protection and greatly increased humanitarian assistance, displaced civilians risk dying from epidemics and man-made famine," said Rone. "The international community must ensure that its humanitarian aid does not reinforce the displacement and make it permanent."
Human Rights Watch said that the Sudanese government's blanket denial of access to humanitarian agencies, in violation of its obligations under international law, and deliberately cumbersome relief regulations have already contributed to the deteriorating health and nutritional status of displaced persons. Estimates of people requiring food and other emergency aid are rising above one million for 2004-2005-including refugees, displaced, and other conflict-affected.
Human Rights Watch is concerned that the Sudanese government has entered into the ceasefire only because it has largely completed the forced displacement of the targeted ethnic groups from rural areas. It is feared that the government will manipulate humanitarian aid so that displaced people are forced to stay in the government-sponsored camps and be prevented from returning home to farm their lands. Some reports indicate that rival ethnic groups of Arab extraction are settling the villages and lands from which African residents were violently evicted.
Human Rights Watch confirmed that government janjaweed militias continue to control much of the rural area, imposing checkpoints and demands for payment on civilians or refusing them passage to their villages. They also block the paths of civilians trying to flee to Chad as refugees for safety.
While the ceasefire agreement requires the Sudanese government to "neutralize" militias in Darfur, the meaning of this commitment is unclear. Rather than disarming and disbanding the groups, there are indications that the government of Sudan might incorporate them into the Sudanese armed forces, a step that would merely underscore their impunity and de facto control over areas of Darfur.
Since February 2003, the government has recruited and armed thousands of Arab militia from the region to fight an insurgency composed mainly of members of the Zaghawa, Fur, and Masaalit ethnic groups. The agreement, which came into effect on April 11, 2004, provides for "fast and unrestricted humanitarian access to the needy populations of Darfur" and is to be followed by further negotiations for a "definitive settlement of the conflict."
